Australian politics should be relatively simple . . . but it’s not
“Australia has a rich history of putting liars into politics” writes Daemon Singer in this letter to The AIMN.
At some point, preferably in the fairly near future, Australians have
to understand that there are more forms to politics than the ALP, the
LNP and the Greens.
I was recently talking to a dyed in the wool Liberal woman (not that
her gender makes any difference) about the current state of politics and
her only response was to laugh and point out the only option was Labor
and after 30 years of Labor membership, I had to agree, the ALP really
are not an alternative to the Liberals. Rather, they have taken half a
step to the left but espouse the same views and support the same people
that the LNP does now and has forevermore.
Australian politics should be relatively simple. We have 22 million
people divided up into a bunch of states and territories and then we
have our local councils and amongst the people who vote in all three
levels of election there are crowds of people saying “there must be
something more, or something better”.
At the last federal election, the young burghers of Indi decided
they’d had enough of Sophie Mirabella and a group of them sat down in
the library and said; “enough”.
As a group they located volunteers, formed an organisation, had over
400 “kitchen table conversations” and came up with a list of over 400
things that people felt were important for their electorate. They then
found 3,000 plus volunteers to spread the word throughout the electorate
and together raised almost $200,000. Think about the numbers. A
donation of $67 per person.
They then advertised for a candidate.
In other words, the entire process was community driven and it wasn’t
so much a matter of one person deciding they wanted to run, rather, the
community decided they needed a change and ran with it.
I think it’s reasonable to say that most electorates in this country
at some stage, at one level of government or another, have found they
were being either badly represented, not represented, or by far the most
common process under the ALP/LNP/Greens process is to find they are
being misrepresented altogether.
Think of it from this perspective – you spend your entire life as an
ALP member going to the monthly meetings, maybe spending a bit of time
as the secretary or the treasurer of the branch and then a few months
before election time the party parachutes in somebody that you have no
clue about and who most certainly doesn’t represent you, who has no skin
in the game of your electorate, but who is owed a favour by the powers
that be.
This process of parachuting is not something that is specific to the
ALP. It is done by both major parties and in fact currently the only
party that doesn’t do it is the Greens. From what I can see the Greens
do all they can to support local people who are interested in becoming
members and who may then be interested in becoming representatives.
The ALP and the LNP ride roughshod over whatever decisions are made
at a branch level in an effort to maintain good relationships with their
“proven performers”, even though the proven performance may be more
related to efforts on behalf of the union in the case of the ALP, or for
one’s capacity to run a business in the case of the LNP. (Think Clive
Palmer pre-dummy-spit).
If one is to be a member of the Greens, it merely requires a
commitment to the environment and a desire to see things change. That is
not the case with the ALP or the LNP, where change is obviously
anathema.
The last couple of weeks has seen yet another LNP government take us
into a war which on the surface at least, appears to belong to someone
else, in a country where being at war has been the normal state for
thousands of years. How is it that the United States feel that every
country which has oil on offer needs democracy, particularly democracy
in the American style? What is it about the US democracy which world
governments, including Australia feel is such a wonderful thing that
everybody should have it? (Not that we have it here).
Australia as a country with a democratic process under the
Westminster system is only a couple of hundred years old. In the greater
scheme of things, a veritable juvenile.
Prior to the invasion, as far as we can tell, there had never been a
war here, and the first people had been living here comfortably for over
60,000 years. They had around 700 languages yet were still able to
establish trade routes across the continent.
Each nation/language group had their own rules, and from what I’ve
read, most of them were successful for social, political, and economic
cohesion.
They achieved this without having a Bible or in fact any so-called
book of learning. In most cases their languages were not written and any
messages they wanted to send were done quite clearly, pictographically,
and many of those pictographs still survive to this day so long as
there are/have been no interferences from big oil, big mining, big
government or big ideas.
I’m not for one minute suggesting that we should adopt the
pre-invasion political systems, but at some stage I think it’s
reasonable that we at least contemplate the idea of giving a little
credit where credit is due, to those of us who think a little bit about
politics rather than repeating a party line and not understanding that
there is far more to politics than being a member of the party.
Parties, if they do nothing else prove time and time again that they
can be incredibly wrong and we as the voting public just shrug our
shoulders and say “maybe they’ll get better”, but the normal process is
that nothing ever changes.
Interestingly, since the Abbott adventure began, the Prime Minister
appears to have screwed more people than he has helped and I’m sorry to
say that the cynic in me finds it very difficult to relate the recent
trip to Arnhem land to anything beyond vote buying, not so much from the
First People he spent the time with, but rather changing the minds of
those who pointed out that he quite clearly said in 2013; “with the
permission of the owners/custodians of this land, I will spend my first
week as prime minister, should Australia put me in that position, in
first peoples country”.
To his credit, at least he did it which is more than can be said for
the things he said he wouldn’t do in terms of education funding,
(outside of putting chaplains in schools), health and Medicare, the
situation of the poor elderly and the situation of the young unemployed.
It must be said that not one of those promises came to anything. Every
one of them was a lie.
Australia has a rich history of putting liars into politics. They
make ridiculous promises that we know they could never hope to keep, or
that we assume they have no intention of keeping, apart from a few
grass-roots things, including the above education, health and welfare.
At what point do we as Australian voting citizens say “enough is enough” and seek some form of change?
Is it when we realise that no matter what the party in power does,
the party in opposition will agree if it relates to war or our
incestuous relationship with the USA which gives us exactly nothing?
At what point do we seek honesty and transparency in our elected
members by putting in place a process which will watch them? When will
we demand that accountability? A federal ICAC may well be a good start
since ICAC in NSW have not found against a single non-aligned member of
the Parliament.
As a small business owner, it’s probably reasonable to say that I
would not employ somebody who was a complete liar. So why do we voters
do it? Why is it okay for politicians to lie and still get elected? Why
do we as voters think we are so useless and so meaningless in the
overall scheme of things, that we can’t take matters into our own hands?
The question that we must each as individuals ask ourselves and find
an answer for is “what does the politician have that I don’t?”
The answer naturally enough, is ‘nothing’. They all crap, they all
speak, (and there is a point where most of them speak crap). They all
drink and eat but it would appear that one thing they do more than your
average citizen . . . is tell lies.
Over a series of articles I would like to investigate the process of
finding 30 independent candidates for each of the major houses in this
country. Senate, Representatives, State houses (upper and lower where
applicable).
Is there a reason we can’t? Further, is there a reason we shouldn’t?
It really amounts to just one thing-each of us needs to ask “are my interests being looked after by the person who currently sits in Parliament as my representative?”
If the answer is ‘no’ then perhaps it’s time to start thinking about changing.
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